Village Hidden in the Smog
by PureWaterLily
Summary: I tried to self-insert. It backfired.


Some people jump inside television screens. Others get into fatal car accidents. A few wish upon shooting stars. In any case, you're supposed to wake up and find yourself teleported to the Naruto world.

I'm not so creative with my attempt.

Today, I decide to cross my fingers together and shout, "Kuchiyose no jutsu!"

I do not expect anything to happen. And nothing does.

.

Morning. I hit my alarm clock. Halfway into my teeth brushing, I notice something outside my window.

It is an eyeball. A really big eyeball.

My apartment is on the 32th floor of a highrise building. In Manhattan.

There is a giant frog sitting in the middle of New York City.

.

I am of the five thousand people in the chaos of Times Square. The subway lines are down, traffic fallen to a grinding halt. I furiously pedal my bike, trying to reach the shoreline, then the GW Bridge. Because apparently, there is now a giant snake alongside the giant frog, and we're all going to fucking die.

.

I stare at the wreckage across the Hudson, the beloved skyline of my home city reduced to ruins.

There has to be a scientific reason, I think. This can't be from my mock attempt at a summoning jutsu yesterday. I can't have possibly brought the Naruto world into the real world.

Because that would be impossible. I mean, I don't have chakra. My hand seals weren't even right.

.

News stream on my phone at a rapid pace. Every other word is "Naruto" or its foreign language equivalent. The fans have caught on quick. Everywhere, there are manga panels and real life photographs placed side-by-side.

The photos are quick, messy, and taken last second by phone. But you don't need to squint to see a clay owl in the skies of Dubai, a winged angel perched on top of the Tokyo tower, or the mobs of homunculi terrorizing the streets of Cairo.

Above, helicopters scatter the horizon. From one of those aircraft must be the camera capturing the fight in Central Park. There is an army of moving orange dots.

.

My heart stops when I see a real life picture of Itachi on my newsfeed. This is a _really_ inappropriate time to fangirl, I think. Considering the apocalypse and all.

Still, that is not a bad picture of him.

.

I sit reunited with my friends and family. We are in the basement of a close friend of mine from high school. His father is a cop. His radio extends our contact with the outside world for another day and half before that dies too.

The last thing anyone of us hears is something about the CIA, army responses, and nuclear warfare. Our governments have failed to communicate with the so-called EDTs - extradimensional terrestrials. They could just call them Naruto characters.

There is a strange absence of news on the creators of said characters. Then again, there probably isn't much to say after Japan sunk into the ocean.

There is one spark of hope though. Before the internet collapsed, readers of the Naruto manga were gathering into one multiscale community. Unlike the government, they were making effort to specifically find the "heroes". Brazil made peace with Team Ebisu. Germany had found Haruno Sakura. She appeared receptive to communication.

.

The electricity went first. Then our telecommunications. The next thing to go is transportation.

As we walk down the interstate, my friend comments how surreal everything is, all the abandoned cars packed on the road, from your battered Honda civics to brand new Mercedes.

Just a week ago, we were still on our laptops, streaming Youtube videos and flipping through manga. Now, we're the new cast of The Walking Dead.

Except instead of zombies, we've got, you know, ninjas.

.

On the bright side, this is probably the most cardio I've gotten in my life. It's a two hundred mile marathon north. Walking and more walking, with a few hitchhikes interspersed in between. We rely on the hospitality of local townspeople and establishments. To eat. Get news. Charge our phones.

A bus picks us up and takes us through the last fifty mile stretch to Boston. Halfway through, we notice our phones are picking up signal once more.

Unlike the tri state area, this city is undamaged.

One of my friend's sister is a student at MIT. She embraces us, then takes us to her campus's shelter.

.

The annihilation of NYC had a spiraling domino effect. Key corporations got severed from their main databases. No service. The financial sector came to screeching halt. No money. We lost 60 Hudson and Google. No internet. We lost the towers and power grid. No help _._

For those in the middle of the blackout, it may have well seemed like the collapse of civilization. Nothing works. No one knows what to do.

However, what we did not know was that as we panicked, our trans-Atlantic lines were being repaired and rerouted. That the Canadian petroleum and airline companies reorganized to sustain us. That Google rebooted from their California base.

As for the EDTs, we've caught them. Or rather, the two responsible for destroying my home city.

The sandwich pauses before my mouth. "Our military _caught_ Naruto and Sasuke?" I struggle to imagine a battle scenario that did not involve nukes.

Turns out, not even god-tier ninjas are a match for some good old WWI gassing.

.

The international war against the EDTs continues. There are still major cities off-grid: Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Mumbai, Sheol. But for the most part, the world is reconnecting. And we are fighting back. Hard.

While my friends scroll through news, I scroll through posts of the online Naruto community.

I find I am not the only person disconcerted that Naruto and Sasuke are MIA. To the rest of the world, they are terrorists. Invaders. Abominations. The Naruto community is more divided on the issue.

 _I don't know, it just feels OOC for them to be that negligent of civilian life_ , says one post. _Hidan is one thing, but Naruto and Sasuke wouldn't fight in the middle of a city unless they have no choice._

The post gathers a lot of vitriol. The wounds are too fresh in memory. This isn't another hypothetical debate over cartoons. This is real life. Friends are dead. Families are dead.

Yet, even then, some find little choice but to submerge themselves in hypotheticals. Some refuse to accept the media explanation of EDTs. These aren't aliens. These aren't time travelers. These are _Naruto characters_. The appearances, abilities, mannerisms... the evidence is too staggering.

And if we were to accept that these are indeed Naruto characters, then we have to treat them as such. We have to keep questioning, no matter how callous or cruel or delusional that may seem. Find out their motives. Why they are here. How they got here. Why they are doing the things they're doing.

A minority voice come to the OP's defense.

 _Okay, so all the videos show Naruto and Sasuke were fighting_ , says another post. _But do we have any definitive evidence that they were fighting EACH OTHER?_

.

It is the middle of the night.

Unable to sleep, I lie in my sleeping bag. Many things run through my mind, but I settle for wallowing in incredibility.

It has only been 15 days since I sat on my couch, fingers crossed, making a lame, half-hearted attempt to teleport myself into the Naruto world.

In the following 48 hours, I managed to be of the 2% of New Yorkers to survive the ensuing catastrophe. As soon I saw Gamabunta, I just... knew. My body just reacted, the toothbrush still in my mouth when I climbed on top my bike. My building caved in 4 minutes later. I did not stay. I did not stare, take pictures, wait.

I predicted the rasengan and chidori long before they took down the Empire State Building. I already knew what to expect when I logged into my Facebook.

Had I hesitated for just a second, paused to think, I would not be alive right now.

Fingers shaking, I power on my phone and begin typing in the dark. I am no longer writing fanfiction. I am writing my life.

.

Just when I think we might all survive this, my friend points to the night sky. "Look, a lunar eclipse."

I stare at the blood red moon. That is not a lunar eclipse.

"Fuck."


End file.
